Podcast Tuesday

Podcasts: 1250

I updated my iOS last week.  It was stupid.

Why?  A coworker told me that she didn’t think there was much different about it but the things that are different are actually things that I use.  Like, why is it that when I slide up on my lock screen to turn my phone on to DND or use the flashlight there are five million (exaggeration) buttons?  And why the hell is the podcast app all messed up?  Instead of a list, there are huge icons.  If I want to get to my list in the order I had it (very important to me) I have to go to “library” and then “shows” and I had to turn it to manual order. AND I don’t know how many GB my podcasts are taking up now.  It’s bull shit.

Obviously, I’m still playing catch-up with my podcasts.  I am working on it and I get a little further all of the time.  I only have 14 episodes of On Being left, and that ought to count for something.

I miss podcasts and I just don’t feel like I’ve had a lot of time to listen to them lately.  I’ve been talking to my mother or my baby.  I’ve been, well, I don’t know what I’ve been doing.  But I have more time to catch up!

Great story on the Moth about writing speeches for Obama that had me laughing this week.

Lots of great book suggestions on All the Books.

Plus the suggestion that Garth Brooks’s biography be called “Pillars of the Garth,” which definitely had me laughing!

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Podcast Tuesday- October 3, 2017

Podcasts: 1236

Do you know what is amazing, readers?  Technology is amazing.

When I got my first iPhone, a 4, I bought an Otter Box for it.  When the Otter Box got all stretched out and filthy, I bought another one.  $180 on phone cases!  In the end, that phone had a hard drive malfunction and erased its own memory, a  problem that no Otter Box could prevent.  It didn’t even last two years and at the time I was doing the “new in two” thing through Verizon.  I ended up on the old Go plan because my two years weren’t up.  I got a 5C in green (because Hubby already had my signature blue) and financed it.

The Go program was great.  You paid on the phone until it was 80% paid off and then you could trade it in for a new phone.  My 80% was up and I decided to upgrade.  I went in for a 6, did my paperwork, signed, was explaining the program to my mother when the salesman said, “Oh.  No.  We don’t offer that program anymore.  It’s just a lease now.”  Bastard.  But I took my 6 and I loved it.  I filled it with pictures and podcasts and games and it became, well, an addiction for me but some addictions I’m okay with.

Then Sunday I sat my phone down on the counter while I wrote down my numbers on my calendar.  (Every day I write down how many podcasts I have and how many gigs they are using because I have ISSUES, okay?)  And somehow the perfect kismet of the universe bit me in the ass.  My phone fell from the counter to the wood floors, a fall that it had made several times before but one that it would, sadly, not survive this time.  Upon closer inspection, I saw that my cheap case had broken in one spot and the impact was enough to shove the jagged edge into the screen and shatter it.

Long story short, I have a new phone.

Now, in preparation for that, I made a list of the podcasts I follow just in case.  I couldn’t remember if they transferred between phones or not and I did NOT want to be left in the dark.  But the world is amazing and all I had to do was back up my phone, and then download the backup, and here I stand, with a new phone and all of the downloaded episodes still downloaded.  Seamless.

Podcast Tuesday Part 2!

I did something.

I don’t know why I did it, especially because Hubby has been bothering me to do it forever.  Today it just made sense.

I deleted most of my backlog of downloaded episodes.

At present I only have the podcasts that I am caught up on and four or five of my “next up” podcasts.  I went from 38.55 GB to 19.34 GB!  And it should only get better!  From now on, I’m only downloaded what I’m caught up on and my “next up.”  After I catch up on these, I’ll only have one or two “next up” podcasts!

I don’t know how much freer I feel or anything like that.  Maybe just cleaner?  Better able to take pictures and videos of my baby?  Still, it’s nice!

Podcast Tuesday- September 19, 2017

Podcasts: 1213

Fall is in the air.  I can tell because I want to make a big change.  I want to take a long nap.  I want to go for a long walk and listen to 90’s music.  I can tell because suddenly I want to put all of the fall in my face.  I want to read and watch horror.  I want to listen to horror.

This week I am playing catchup with podcasts after finished Anne of Windy Poplars on audio.  I’m continuing on with my On Being project and I am down to 33!  I feel like that is impressive but when I look back I realize that actually I only made a small dent this week.  Only four!  Well five because a new one hit the feed this week.  Still, a little bit goes a long ways eventually, right?

I thought that I would be able to make a bigger dent in it this week after I caught up.  I didn’t realize how far behind I was on the stuff that I HAD been caught up on.  It feels kind of like a mess.  But when things get like this I just remind myself that I will get there eventually, that slow and steady wins the race.

Am I taking a lot from On Being? As I said before, it’s hit or miss.  This morning I listened to an episode titles “On Whiteness” and it was interesting but it also pretty much confirmed a lot of stuff that I already know and believe.  I live in the middle of nowhere.  I went to school with two black kids, one who left in sixth grade and one who came in eleventh grade.  There are a lot of racists around me, people who wave the confederate flag even though their families have lived on the same NORTHERN land since 1850 but they still somehow have “Southern pride.”  It is normal for me to hear something like, “I’m not one of those people but I think they should just go back home/to Africa.”  It’s an embarrassment.

I didn’t think a lot about race when I was growing up.  When I was in sixth grade I told my teacher that I thought I might be racist because I felt funny when I went to the mall in the city.  Now that I am older, I realize that what I was experiencing was not racism, it was simply how you feel when you go somewhere different, somewhere with a lot of strangers and new experiences.  I mean,  I feel that way when I use a new bathroom.

Maybe I was primed to think about things differently than people I know.  Because I started calling myself a witch when I was 12.  Because I started calling myself a feminist when I was 14.  Because I had a surprisingly large number of gay/lesbian friends in high school.  When I went to college, I had to take a class called Gender, Race, and Sexuality that was about discrimination and the legal system and all of that.  I had never thought of institutional/systematic racism until then but it made complete sense to me because wasn’t that what feminism was talking about too?

I recognize that my race makes it easy for me to say that I am sick of the whole fight.  I am privileged to ignore it when I need to.  And, actually, it was kind of nice listening to this episode because it confirmed the things that I remember learning about all of those years ago.  So, no, I’m not crazy.

Podcast Tuesday- September 12, 2017

Podcasts: 1191

Something happens to me every August.  It’s part of the reason that I hate August.  For me, August is the cruelest month.

Autumn has always been my favorite season, the season when it’s okay to be really into witches and ghosts and vampires.  The season when school starts back up and everything is new and you can remake yourself.

What happens every August is that I start to feel the itch for rebirth.  It’s like my cocoon is starting to chafe.  Suddenly I need to lose weight, throw out all of my junk, buy all new clothes, and have some sort of spiritual awakening.  Three years ago, I spent the month obsessing over my weight and how fucking terrible I am and how I just need to get my shit together and be beautiful and fun and smart and interesting and clean and a good cook and a dedicated librarian and a writer.  I obsessed myself into a depression and only stopped when my father died, making my pant size seem pretty unimportant.  This is the time of year when I dig out my tarot cards and witchcraft books.  This is the season when I start listening to podcast preachers.

But this year I am listening to On Being still and I am listening to one episode a day.  I am down to 37 episodes.  They’re hit or miss.  Sometimes when I listen I feel like I am really gaining some sort of insight that I will carry into my day.  Other times I just feel soothed.  And there is nothing wrong with feeling soothed.

That’s all that I’ve really listened to this week.  I am trying to tear through Anne of Windy Poplars at present and should finish up tomorrow or Thursday.  After that I’ll spend next week catching up on stuff that I was caught up on before.

Podcast Tuesday- September 5, 2017

Podcasts: 1175

So… I was supposed to spend last week listening to podcasts between audiobooks.  I know that.  But then one day, just for shits and giggles, I pushed the “sat” button on my radio and there is was!  My three month trial of Sirius!  I had been hoping that I would get one.  I had Sirius for about five years and loved it.  I spent that day scrolling through the stations and setting my presets and since then I have been listening to tons of music in the car.  I missed Lithium and AltNation and Willy’s Roadhouse and 90’s on 9.  I imagine my listening is about to go way down…

I regret nothing.

For the past couple of weeks I have been trying to figure out how to catch up on On Being, which usually runs about 50 minutes and I have 44 episodes of.  It seems like I can never make a very big dent in it.  I try to.  When I have my little catch-up weeks I always think, “I can do it this time!”  But, you know, I have no sense of how long things take.  Those 44 episodes work out to at least 37 hours of audio and I just can’t pull that off unless I’m going nonstop.

But I’ve made a decision!  My goal is to listen to ONE On Being a day.  It will be the first podcast I listen to and if it isn’t one that I am particularly into, I’m going to delete it and move on.  A little bit goes a long way sometimes and I know that it will pay off in the long run.  After I listen to my one episode for the day, I can listen to other podcasts or my audiobooks or music.  Whatever.  I’m going to make a dent one way or another!

I’ve made some resolutions to get shit back under control around here for the fall.  First, I am going to make it a priority to read my book for 30 minutes every morning.  Second, I am going to listen to that one On Being every day.  I wonder where I’ll be in a month!

Podcast Tuesday- August 29, 2017

Podcasts: 1154

Just like 20 more than last week.  Whatever.

This week I am playing the “podcast listening” game.  I finished my audiobook on Friday and settled in for a nice catch up.  And I HAVE caught up on a lot of stuff.  I just haven’t made a dent in the new stuff.

Have you guys checked out Annotated yet?  It’s a Book Riot podcast and I listen too all but one of those.  I was a little iffy about Annotated at first but the last three episodes have been great.  First there was “The World’s Most Glamorous Librarian” which was right up my alley.  Then there was “The United States Versus One Book Called ‘Ulysses'” which was more enjoyable than I expected.  Then yesterday I listened to “The 17-Year-Old Who Invented Science Fiction.”

I only read Frankenstein for the first time within the last five years and I didn’t really care for it.  It felt like a very moral book.  I have never been drawn into the Mary Shelley fan club.  But right now I want to reread the book and then dig up a great biography.

Imagine, listening to an atmospheric Podcast about that dark and stormy summer while driving through a heavy storm that smacks of autumn?  It was kind of perfect.

Happy listening!